Water closets, also called toilets, are waste disposal devices commonly installed in most bathrooms. These kinds of plumbing appliances generally include a water-storing receptacle called a water tank that is attached to a siphon seat-shaped bowl called a toilet bowl. Periodically, waste is removed from the toilet bowl by flushing, thereby allowing water to drain from the water tank through the toilet bowl and into a waste drainpipe. In order to work, however, the toilet bowl must be connected to the waste drainpipe by fluid carrying conduits. Typically, the toilet bowl will sit flat on a floor and connect with a rigid water closet flange. The water closet flange in turn connects with conduits leading to a waste drainpipe.
Conventional water closet flanges are typically designed to interconnect between conduits lying on a common longitudinal axis. Accordingly, such water closet flanges are formed to be rigid and generally do not provide any kind of flexibility along their conduit portion and are therefore insufficient for allowing any non-negligible distortion of the flange.
Moreover, flexible flanges may be desirable when connecting between discharge pipes and waste drain outlets having offset, misaligned, angled, or otherwise incongruous configurations.
As can be appreciated, the aforementioned problems are attributable to varying construction methods and materials. Most professionals who deal with these kinds of problems turn to the use of wax seals and/or modification of the waste drainpipe. However, these solutions are not reliable because the seal connection is not strong enough to prevent leakage and associated odors, and oftentimes they can be expensive and inefficient due to delays in the installation process.
Also, conventional closet flanges are made for a specific type of piping, such as cast iron piping, PVC piping, or ABS piping, but not compatible with multiple types of pipings. One reason is due to metal piping having a smaller internal diameter than the ones made from PVC or ABS.
Improved water closet flanges for addressing the above-described problems are desired. Related methods for installing improved water closet flanges are also desired.